


Remedy

by Redfire_Dragon



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: No one ever thanks the medics, Origin Story, Plague, Sad, feeeeeels, mentioned non graphic deaths, survivor's guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-03-01 06:35:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13289115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Redfire_Dragon/pseuds/Redfire_Dragon
Summary: Someone once mentioned that Ratchet seemed to bemadeto be a medic/doctor. Which does quite seem to be the case in some ways. But even in the briefness of TFP it is clear that his skills also cover quite a lot of engineering and biochemistry. So whatdiddrive him to become the greatest of the doctors of Cyberton?This was the answer that came, in the quiet sobbings of a broken spark, its story too long untold and unguessed at





	Remedy

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes I wonder if the original transformer names weren't them being named after things so much as things being named after them. And so Remedies are medicines, the best medicines, made by the Great Physician Remedy himself. In time all the best medicines were known as remedies, and the source was forgotten.

Swift fidgeted. He hated to stay still so long, and he had been waiting behind this building in this quiet alley for several joors now. He wanted to run or drive, to race, to *move*. His plating twitched and rattled, spreading out then settling flat again. But no, his village needed him, he had come too far to fail them simply because his tires itched.

One pede began to tap, rhythm short and sharp, and then he was pacing back and forth the width of the alleyway, then the length. But pacing the length brought him too close to the road, that inviting stretch of black that just begged for him to let loose, burn rubber and chase the horizon. He went back further into the alleyway and confined himself to pacing from the wall of one building to the other until at last he was able to hold still again. They needed him, and he needed to be here when the other arrived. He wouldn't fail them, no matter how hard it was to hold still so long.

He was just about to start pacing again, his nervous pedes actually hurting from tap tapping the ground so hard, when the back door of one building opened. It was all he could do not to flat out run to the door. But if he started running now he wouldn't stop, not for a long while, and he needed to get the package first. Moving in short sharp jerks he approached the mech, trying not to act too weird and startle the mech approaching him from the bright light of the building. The door closed and the Alleyway was dark again, his optics all but blind as they recallibrated. "Did you bring it?" He asked as slowly as he could, making the pace of the words merely quick instead of his naturally blindingly fast speed. Few but other speedsters could understand that.

The mech in front of him turned out to be blue and a deep dark teal, definitely a four wheeler, and a fast one, a racer model? Those optics were sharp though, with burning intensity for the here and now instead of the perpetual slightly distracted gaze of someone suffering a case of severe road hunger like Swift was now. But he could focus too, if he needed to, and now he did. The mech didn't answer his question out loud, instead holding out a box. Swift's optics flicked to the unknown mech then to the box, and back again, then to the box. Moving at a speed most would consider normal, though it seemed painfully slow to him, he opened the box and pulled out a stoppered glass flask. The fluid inside was a bright gleaming red-orange, a sunset color, even glowing softly in the dark like energon. It looked almost magical, yet at the same time, it was just a liquid. It was hard to believe this was what would save his village. "Are you sure it will work? This is the Remedy?"

The sleek blue mech nodded. "Yes, made by the grand physician himself." Immediately Swift's tense frame began to relax, and he almost missed what the other had to say next. "But there is a problem."

"Money? I told you, that was all we have, morewillcomelater." He was getting nervous, worried, so his control was slipping. "More will come later." He repeated, at a more normal pace for Cybertronians. But the other mech was already shaking his helm.

"It isn't that." He said, voice calm but grim. "If your reports are accurate, then by the time you get back to your village, you will either need more than you can carry alone, or none at all."

Swift bristled. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"It's a plague, a terrible one. By the time you return, either everyone will be infected, or dead. And unless your village healer is a good one, all the neighboring villages too."

"Doctor!" Swift snapped. "He's a doctor, and he was telling people not to leave the village if that is what you mean." He snarled, barely able to keep his words under control.

"Doctor?" The blue mech snorted.

"Yesherecievedtrainingandeverything." He snapped out in rapid succession, then stopped, ground his denta and tried again. "He's not just some joke village healer, he's an actual doctor, he _knows_ medical things and _studied_ with a lot of others and even the royal doctors of our land."

The stranger scoffed and Swift snarled his engine at the mech, who held up his hands in a submissive gesture. "Fine fine, he's a doctor. That isn't the issue. You've got a plague on your hands and you don't have the cargo room to take enough medicine to fight it." Swift clenched his denta, he didn't want it to be true but he was most decidedly _not_ medically inclined, if this strange mech said that he couldn't carry enough medicine then he would have to trust his knowledge.

"Then what do you suggest?" Swift asked, worry edging his voice. More medicine? how would they be able to afford it? Even a single of Remedy's medicines was supposed to be incredibly expensive, more than he could carry? But if this was plague... his rushing processor was already painting horrible pictures of how this was going to go. Everyone was going to die. It wouldn't matter how fast he was, people would die, and if there was more sick than medicine who would get the medicine, who would be chosen to live and who to die. He was going to fail them, couldn't bring enough medicine.

"I'm coming with you."

"You'll slow me down." Swift hissed, it would have solved some things, but he was a speedster, and it was clear that time was of the essence.

"I may not be a speedster but I'm still a racing model and a courier, you'll go ahead and I'll follow as fast as I can behind with the rest of the medicine. As it is, it is quite likely you have brought the plague with you. I had to be inoculated before I came out to talk to you. Your 'doctor' has one of these right?" The blue mech asked holding up a medical needle thing. Injector? He couldn't remember the name, but he did recognize it.

"Of course he does, he's a doctor." Swift growled, fidgeting in place. Brought the plague with him? Were people going to get sick and die because of him? True Remedys were hard to come by, and expensive, but the master physician's cures were the only ones that always worked, so long as there was enough strength left in a mech. Plague carrier, no wonder he had been told to wait here and not allowed to interact with anyone.

"Okay, good. I'm going to inoculate you against the plague and then I'm going to bring out the medicine. Arm." Swift held out his arm and the other used the medicine gun, slipping the end in through a slim opening in the elbow joint Swift opened up. He hated to admit that he had been feeling slightly off, his racing mind running into awful conclusions and glad he hadn't visited anywhere on the way, that would have spread the plague further. "You will stop being contagious in about an orn."

"Contagious?"

"Medical term, transform and wait here. I've got your comm number so as soon as you are fully loaded you can take off, I'll comm you for directions as I follow. With the distance to your village I should arrive only half an orn after you do. It's a good thing I do long distance not just sprints. I'll bring out some fuel too so you can top off and some sealed containers of it so you can have some for the journey too. Don't worry about where you spread the plague on your journey, when we realized what the disease was that you described countermeasures were activated. They are still figuring out the details of how to prevent an outbreak inside but we need to get going now if there is any chance to save any mechanisms from your home. Got it?" Swift nodded, blinking rapidly. All his major concerns and worries addressed. They _were_ well organized here. "Name's BlueLight, I'll be right back."

It wasn't long before Swift was on the road again, pushing his engine to its limit, heading back home and praying to Primus he would be in time to save them all.

He wasn't.

When he pulled up to his village it was far too quiet. Mechanimals wandered through the streets, doors hung open, and there wasn't a person to be seen anywhere. Only when he got further in did the bodies begin to appear, piled in heaps, greyed out. He began to fear there were no survivors at all. But as he traveled deeper in he found some still living, under awnings surrounding the doctor's home and workshop. He carefully let out enough of his cargo that he could transform and pulled out the medical injector. Filling it he began. Injecting everyone who wasn't entirely grey. Several he watched the last of their light fade as he worked. There was only horror in his spark, dull and aching, but he had to do this, had to save whoever he could. Inside was much the same, only one was awake, their doctor, collapsed in a chair near one of his patients. One of his once patients, the mech was clearly dead now.

"You are too late Swift." The medic said simply, voice tired, exhausted even. "Or rather... the disease progressed too rapidly."

"ItriedIreallytried.IranasfastasIcouldandIwascarefuljustlikeyousaidandIdidn'tstopatothervillagesbutIgottheRemedy,realactual,legitimateRemedy.It'llsave" Swift began, speaking at his normal speed but quickly stopped as the doctor raised a hand weakly.

"It is too late here... HelmWide and... ScatheDeep... spread... some of dying fled." There was a note in the medic's hand and Swift took it cautiously. "Wrote... wrote down... in case..." And the light died out of the medic's optics. Frantically Swift injected the mech with some of the Remedy, praying he wasn't too late. The mech had been talking just seconds ago, surely he was strong enough to survive! It was comforting that the doctor didn't immediately grey out after the injection but the incident reminded Swift of what he _should_ be doing.

Speedsters were quick, that was what made you a speedster. But in the end only a little over two dozen were still alive for him to administer the medicine to. The note showed the towns that the plague had been confirmed to have reached and ones that were suspected. There was so much medicine, so very much, and so few he had been able to save here. He commed Bluelight, diverting the mech to one of the infected villages on the way and took another for himself.

The two of them did their best, and in the end the casualties in the other villages were not so bad, the plague having been there a shorter time. HelmWide lost only a quarter of its population and ScatheDeep less than a fifth, while in the other villages and outlying areas the body count was rarely far into double digits. The Remedy had come in time for all of them, just not Swift's own home.

Being a speedster he completed his part of the Remedy distribution quickly and returned to his home village. One by one by one he checked those whom he had administered the medicine to. And one by one by one he found them dead, too far gone for even the best of medicine made by Remedy, the Master Physician and Chemist, to save. Only the doctor remained, weak, almost dead, so Swift cared for him. Bluelight came to help after his share of the medicine had been distributed. Together they melted down the dead of his village, destroying their frames and the plague they carried. It was long slow work but necessary as was killing and destroying all the domesticated mechanimals who, while not harmed by the disease, still carried it.

Whenever he could Swift took a break to go check on the sick doctor, forcing a bit of energon down his intake, checking the progress of his recovery, or sometimes just sitting and staring at the only other mechanism of his entire villages left alive. Orns passed and slowly the doctor began to recover, strengthening with each solar cycle though he never spoke or would look Swift in the optics. Survivor's guilt, Bluelight said, and explained the condition, something Swift realized he was suffering too, though it did not drive him to muteness.

In the end the outbreak traveled no further than the villages in the immediate vicinity. What should have devastated their entire country instead had a death toll of less than a five hundred. Swift thought people would come to pay their respects to the doctor who had managed to prevent the plague from spreading, who had trained the people not to flee and spread the disease, who had held so many firm in the face of death, even if they did not know he'd survived surely some would come to pay their respects to the one who's quick diagnosis of the first infected individual had sent Swift in search of a Remedy that had saved so very many lives. But medics don't get thanked, and healers are often overlooked and ignored when no illness currently threatens.

It was as Swift was explaining his confusion over this that the doctor finally spoke. "They blame me for the outbreak." He said simply.

Swift scoffed. "That is stupid, you didn't cause the disease, and you couldn't keep everyone strong enough not to flee... as it was there was what? three plague carriers that left the village? four? Out of several hundred?"

But the doctor shook his helm. "If I had been a better doctor it wouldn't have happened." He insisted, optics dimmed with grief.

"Don't be foolish, even you couldn't have stopped a plague like that. It was an act of Primus." The speedster insisted.

The doctor gave a dry mirthless laugh. "No it wasn't, it was a plague, nothing more, nothing less. And while I couldn't stop it Remedy's potions were able to." He got up slowly, a cold determination settling into every angle of his frame.

"What are you doing? You aren't fully recovered yet!"

"I am recovered enough Swift." The doctor looked around the small empty house that had once served as both workplace and home for the last several vorns of his long life. "Go, you should not stay in this dead village. You are quick and clever, you will find work somewhere. Perhaps you can be a courier to the Lord of these lands. Bringing the Remedy that saved so many will be a good recommendation, especially seeing how far you had to go to get it."

"But... but what about you Ratchet? You aren't going to stay here right? Where will you go?" Swift asked anxiously. He tried not to cry, the doctor was the last member of his original village still left alive. He couldn't help feeling abandoned being sent away like an unruly newspark.

The doctor gave another of those hollow laughs that Swift had immediately come to hate. "I must become a better doctor... I... I will not fail like this again." His optics were sad, wandering around the room then hardening with determination as he gave a faint nod. "I will go to that new city they are building, Iacon, apprentice myself to Remedy. I will become better until I never lose another patient that could have been saved." He shuddered once, as if slightly daunted by the task ahead of him, then began to gather up supplies and a few personal items.

In less than a joor the doctor had left the village that had been his home for so long to make the almost impossibly long trek through the untamed wilds of Cybertron toward that freshly forged beacon of hope and learning that was called Iacon.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a companion piece to this, a bit about Ratchet's emergence from the Well of Allsparks and his journey through the underworld to the surface, and a bit of another that might follow this.  
> Basically, I read too much wiki and think too much.


End file.
